This week I had the pleasure of working with Jessica – a fellow MALAT student, corporate trainer, and thoughful parent – on the following assignment. While we are about five years apart in our parenting journey (her with a pre-teen, myself with a teenager) we found we had common ground in giving careful consideration to how we supported digital literacy for our children. As we explored this topic together of building digital literacy in young learners, we realized just how important and complex this is as an educational and social justice issue. Truth be told, we probably could have written ten times as much on this topic.
If you need a non-image (PDF) image of this infographic for accessibility purposes, please see the link at the bottom of this post.
How did you learn about digital literacy? If you are a parent, guardian, mentor, or teacher to young people – is this something you actively teach? I’m interested to hear other people’s opinions on this topic. For myself, we got our first home computer (a comodore 64!) when I was an early teen (1993), and didn’t have home internet until the year I started my undergraduate program (1999). When I became a parent, I sought out teachable moments when I could mentor for my child the joys, cautions, and dangers of online spaces. I look forward to hearing others’ perspectives on this topic!
Impressive post Andrea!
I thoroughly enjoyed viewing the images and learning from the stats. This topic is an important one, especially as parents navigate through those teen years. I would have appreciated a guidebook for when my children were younger.
In Manitoba, I am proud of my tech colleagues who are always searching for ways of giving back to the community. Check out the link for TechMB –
https://techmanitoba.ca/digital-literacy/
~Marni
Thank you for the share Marni! That sounds like a really great program for students and educators in Manitoba! I like tha they offer programming in-person, virtual instructor-led, and self-directed in order to reach as wide a population as possible.
One program we have locally through the Waterloo Region Public Library is a hotspot lending program. I know a few people who took advantage of this during the early days of the pandemic as they did not have high-speed internet at home and suddently needed it for their children to attend virtual classes.
https://www.rwlibrary.ca/en/collections/mobilehotspotlendingprogram.aspx
Hi Andrea and Jessica
Great work covering this very important issue.My introduction to the internet was a slow progression so I was able to cautiously step into the “world wide web”. I usually encourage the students that I work with to think twice about what they are putting out there because it can have ripple effects.
I found this 2013 youtube video informative, although it’s from 10 years ago, I think the information is still relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrln8nyVBLU